January 29, 2009

I seed funded a company called Diagnosoft a few years back, mainly because one of the cofounders (Nael Osman) is a life-long friend of mine, but also because the technology was very intriguing and came across as something that could save my life one day 🙂

In layman terms, Diagnosoft develops a program that analyzes cardiac MRI video sequences to generate quantities that show where the heart is weak. These measurements greatly augment the “eye balling” that physicians do today, which leads to faster and more precise detection of problems that can otherwise go undetected. The software also does visualization and integrated reporting, but the core differentiator is the proprietary quantification algorithms. The founders are from John Hopkins University and are the leading experts in this field.

The funding for Diagnosoft comes from a VC firm called “Technology Development Fund (TDF)“, which is based in Egypt. BTW, many of the life sciences VCs that we contacted in the US wussed out from investing in Diagnosoft, the reason they usually gave us was “it is too risky”! Well, yeah, inventing a new disruptive technology is risky, but Diagnosoft is ready to cross the chasm, it is already being used by early adopters at hundreds of research institutions all over the world. Diagnosoft HARP is now the de facto standard for cardiac tagged MRI analysis (more than 22 published papers involving more than 3000 test subjects).

The key premise behind this market opportunity goes as follows: the previous wave of heart treatment was heavy cardiac surgery, the current wave is non-invasive surgery, and the future wave will be pro-active treatment for which precise detection tools like Diagnosoft HARP will be a must. You can find out more by reading the press release announcing the funding and Diagnosoft’s new CEO:

I am very passionate about Diagnosoft, not just because of the market size potential, but rather because it can truly revolutionize prediction and prevention of cardiac diseases, the number one killer of humans in the United States.

Congrats to the Diagnosoft team on this very important milestone, onward and upward.